Tuesday, July 7, 2009

Marbled Marvels

One of the most fun and educational experiences my children had in Italy was learning how to marble paper from our friends at Il Papiro, in Rome. We've been buying hand-marbled papers from them for years, so my girls had seen it before, but there's nothing like the chance to get one's feet wet, or hands in this case.

They took turns dripping paints into a tray lined with a layer of carrageenan sizing, then made patterns including peacock feathers and hearts by pulling fine combs and other tools through the floating paint. When the pattern was finished, they carefully laid a piece of paper in the tray and slowly dragged it out over the edge. The result? A beautiful piece of art! It was so sweet to watch the girls work, and the people at Il Papiro couldn't have been nicer.

A few weeks ago we posted photographs of some of the amazing marbled sheets to this weblog, and now they're all available through our Online Shoppe. Ever since our day with the marblers, I've been fascinated with the technique and want to experience it again. Is there a master marbler out there who could teach a class in this fabulous art at Castle in the Air?

1 comment:

I love "Il Papiro" shops, I visited it last September when I was in Venice and Rome and bought paper and ink and stamps there.I took a class on "How to marble papers" in March this year. My sister is a paper artist and she teached my cousin and me how to marble papers. It was such fun, so I can imagine how much fun your girls have had! Here is a link to my results: http://www.flickr.com/photos/boxwoodcottage/3353560960/in/set-72157600013755301/

My sister http://cordulakagemann.com/ is a fab teacher, she also teached us how to make paper from pulp in another workshop in her beautiful atelier http://www.atelier-weseloh-3.de/

She once visited your Castle in the Air btw (I'm so jealous), when she was over in California for a vacation with her husband and I had bought some Hagemann school charts before for Ulla, so she was so nice and brought them to the Castle for Ulla to pick them up there.

If she would live in your area I'm sure she'd love to come to the castle and teach workshops there! Oh sometimes I wish we'd live closer *sigh*!